Top 6 Best Practices for on-boarding new employees remotely

Post COVID-2019 most of the companies have embraced WFH model for its employees including the HR staff.  How do you on-board new employees when there is no physical office to welcome, no paper documents to sign and no face to face meetings to orient?  On-boarding employees will need good amount of planning and coordination.

Here are the six best practices to make your virtual on-boarding process succeed.

1. Introducing the new employee to the team using video conferencing– Zoom, Skype or Hangout, on day one
2. Arranging IT hardware and manuals in the socially distanced era
3. Walk the new employee through company and HR Policies
4. Assign a mentor always
5. Have a JD – Job Description in place
6. Employee orientation training remotely

1. Introducing the new employee to the team using video conferencing – Zoom, Skype or Hangout, on day one

On the first day, have the new employee join one of your video conferencing team meetings, that you conduct using Skype, Hangouts or Zoom and introduce him or her to the co-workers and the team members. Make sure video is ON for every one and encourage people to check out his / her hobbies or interest. This will make that newly hired employee feels more comfortable and integrate with a company.

HR executive should circulate an email with a welcome note of the person describing the newly joined employee so that the team can come to know about the new employee and his or her skills. Do attach their picture.

Joining an organization remotely through a zoom meeting or Skype is not easy for the person joining the company. He or she may feel out of place. Senior people and mentors should have frequent follow up calls to make him or her as comfortable as possible.

2. Arranging IT hardware and manuals in the socially distanced era

The HR department can inform the IT team in advance about joining of the new employee and make sure the new employee has access to a laptop and other equipment such as keyboard, mouse and data cards on their first day.

HR function can also inform their IT team to create an email Id for the new employee and add the employee to the respective groups for team communication. They can also connect with the new employee to ensure the computer is set up properly with everything as per the employee requirements.

IT team need to coordinate and handover the IT Hardware, laptops and other equipment making sure social distancing norms are followed.

3.  Walk the new employee through company and HR Policies

HR executive can give an overview of the company and explain about the company policies over a video call. We should also share guidelines on how to work from home, how projects need to be executed or delivered and how to maintain the confidentiality of the information’s while working from home.

The HR team can collect the personal contact and bank details of the newly hired person via internal HR software or by email to update their database and to complete the on boarding process.  Make sure to share the details on how to get in touch with the team members during the remote working days.

4. Assign a mentor always

Assigning a mentor should be a standard practice in your organisation.  Assign a mentor to the new employee who can act as bridge between the company and the new employees. Mentor can make the new employee comfortable and clearly explain about the roles and routine.

Mentor can plan and assign simple tasks at the beginning and gradually increase the complexity of the tasks. Providing few pilot projects to make sure he or she is on board fully helps and also give us an opportunity to assess the skills of the incoming new employee.

Ask the new employee to share weekly reports with the mentor and other team members so that progress can be assessed and help can be provided when required.

5. Have a JD – Job Description in place

When an employee joins remotely, it is more important he or she knows what is expected out of the new employee. Hence always put together a detailed job description dealing what all he is expected to do, when is the end result, we are looking for from the new employee.

Such a detailed JD gives more clarity to everyone involved and more clarity to the new employee. Knowing what is expected solves half of the issues.

6.  Employee orientation training remotely

Employee orientation program increases the employee confidence level and also helps the new employee adapt faster to a new job. Make sure you put together a customized orientation program for each group of employees.

The team members can conduct the training sessions through a video calls. The training includes dates, topics, task descriptions and expectations, and an indication of how progress will be evaluated. Through this training, new employees gain knowledge about the services and products of the company and it helps them to understand their roles in the company. It will create an opportunity for a new employee to connect with the existing employees.

In shorts:

Thanks to technology. Even during a pandemic, we not only able to work remotely, we are able to hire new employees remotely and we are able to onboard them remotely.

On-boarding is easy and manageable when we are in a physical office. When we try to onboard people remotely, it is not easy but not impossible either. It is important to plan the on-boarding process properly and not leave it to the new employee to pick up threads on his own.  Such a well-planned remote on-boarding can take the performance of new employee and the organisation to higher levels even in these socially distanced eras.